Oculus Quest

Oculus Quest

Oculus Rift S

Oculus Rift S

Oculus has two new virtual reality headsets, and they both share the same $399 price tag. Beyond that, the Oculus Quest and the Oculus Rift S share several other similarities, like the fact that they use the same Oculus Touch motion controllers. They're fundamentally different devices, though, and they each have their own benefits and drawbacks. If you're serious about jumping into VR with a new Oculus headset, these are the two to consider.

Meet the Headsets

The Oculus Rift S is a tethered VR headset designed to work with a PC, offering the same functions as the original Rift while streamlining and improving several things. It has a higher-resolution screen and redesigned, lighter Oculus Touch controllers, but more importantly, it features a series of outward-facing cameras that allow six-degrees-of-freedom (6DOF) movement tracking without using external sensors that need to be placed around you and that use up USB 3.0 ports. The trade-off is that it connects to PCs over DisplayPort and not HDMI, so some gaming laptops will be incompatible.

The Oculus Quest is a standalone headset that runs on the Android platform, similar to the $199 Oculus Go. It does a lot of things to justify its increased price over the Go, though. Like the Rift S, it uses cameras to provide 6DOF motion tracking, and it uses the same Touch controllers. That's a big step forward in immersiveness, and it addresses our biggest complaint about the Go. The Quest is also much more powerful than the Go, featuring a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor (compared with the Go's Snapdragon 821) and a higher display resolution. It doesn't have the graphical capabilities of a tethered headset like the Rift S, which can use a PC graphics card to push its visuals, but it also doesn't need a PC to run in the first place.

Identical Controls

Since the Quest and the Rift S have 6DOF motion tracking and use the same redesigned Oculus Touch controllers, they can offer experiences that feel the same, even if they don't look the same.

6DOF motion tracking means the system can follow both your orientation (the direction you're facing) and your position (where you're physically located). The term comes from the number of individual measurements used: three measurements for orientation (pitch, yaw, and roll), and three measurements for position (up/down, left/right, and forward/backward). 3DOF headsets and controllers like the Oculus Go only track orientation, while the Quest and Rift S can track it all. That makes a huge difference in VR because it means you can function in a three-dimensional space, moving around and reaching out to manipulate your surroundings. With 3DOF, you can only point.

The new Oculus Touch controllers change very little from the previous ones, which is good because we already love their ergonomics. These are lighter, and the plastic ring that helps the connected headset track position now extends upward over your thumb instead of downward, but otherwise they're the same. Each controller still has an analog stick, two face buttons, a menu button, and two triggers that rest under your index and middle fingers. The analog sticks and buttons cover conventional video game-like controls, while the triggers and motion tracking cover virtually pointing and gripping with hands. They work very well on both headsets.

Both headsets also use the same improved Guardian system to keep track of your play area. The original Rift requires physically dragging a controller around your room, in view of both external sensors, to determine where you can safely use VR. The Quest and Rift S turn on their outward-facing monochrome cameras and let you paint the boundaries of your play area by pointing at the floor with a controller and treating it like a laser pointer. The camera-based Guardian system also recognizes multiple play areas, so you can set up boundaries in different rooms.

Oculus Quest: Wireless Freedom

The biggest advantage of the Oculus Quest is its completely wire-free experience. The headset and controllers don't need any cables to work (except when charging the headset, of course). You can put it on and start playing without wrangling a big wire tethered to a computer. It also means you don't need a computer to begin with, and if you don't already have a decent gaming PC with at least an Nvidia GeForce 1060 GTX video card and a DisplayPort output (for the Rift S), that's a huge plus that will save you a lot of money.

In terms of the VR experience, the Quest comes very close to the Rift S. In fact, its display is higher resolution than the Rift S, at 1,440 by 1,600 pixels compared with 1,280 by 1,440. Its Snapdragon 835 processor is powerful enough that games like Beat Saber and Superhot VR run very well—and the most compelling VR experiences we've seen so far (including these two) aren't graphically complicated to begin with. The Quest can still run into a performance wall compared with the PC power of the Rift S, but that will affect whether a game gets ported to the headset more often than any disruption in how available games play on it.

Because it's an Android-based system, the Oculus Quest doesn't have the same selection of games as the Rift S does with its PC-based Oculus Store. The Quest is launching with some bangers, like Beat Saber and Superhot VR, but you'll be looking at a library of dozens instead of hundreds or thousands. It also means no SteamVR support and little to no support for game mods in any form. That's a pretty big limitation, especially since the Rift has developed a fairly massive store that the Rift S also has access to.

Oculus Rift S: New and Improved VR Using Your PC

The Rift S takes the Rift and makes it simpler and easier. Because it uses cameras on the headset for motion tracking, you only need to use one USB 3.0 port on your computer instead of three, and you don't need to worry about placing external sensors anywhere. That's a big plus, but the use of DisplayPort instead of HDMI can cause some port-based headaches. It comes with a DisplayPort-to-mini-DisplayPort adapter, but if you have a gaming laptop without a DisplayPort of any form, you won't be able to reliably use the Rift S. HDMI-to-DisplayPort adapters are available, but Oculus doesn't guarantee that they'll work with the headset.

Of course, no matter what you use you'll have to deal with a thick, long cable running from the headset to your computer. That's how tethered VR works, and it's still a distinct nuisance. You can use cable management to optimize slack and help prevent you from tripping or pulling anything down, but you're still going to have to handle a big wire over your shoulder. It was a problem with the Rift, and it's a problem with the HTC Vive, the Sony PlayStation VR, and every Windows Mixed Reality headset. But if you want PC (or PS4) power for your VR, you need to accept the cable.

Oddly, the Rift S has a lower resolution than the Quest. It's still a step up from the previous Rift, and it has a higher refresh rate than the Quest (80Hz to 72Hz), but it's strange the PC-based headset pushes fewer pixels. It doesn't impact the visual experience much, though; both headsets look bright and crisp.

The big benefit of the Rift S is its store. It uses the PC-based Oculus Store, which has had a few years to build up an impressive library of games and apps. There are lots of compelling experiences to try here, including a more feature-complete and potentially moddable version of Beat Saber. If the Oculus Store isn't enough, you can also browse SteamVR for even more games (though be prepared to wrestle with settings to get the two platforms to work with each other).

The Verdict: Quest Love

The Rift S is an excellent tethered VR headset and a worthy follow-up to the Rift. It also has a software library that eclipses that of the Quest. Still, we can't get past that cable after playing with the Oculus Quest and experiencing the freedom it offers.

Playing Beat Saber, Superhot VR, and even watching videos and browsing the web in VR with no wires holding you back feels so liberating compared with tethered headsets. The 6DOF movement tracking and Oculus Touch motion controls fix the limited experience of the Oculus Go and give us the first truly immersive standalone VR headset we've tested.

The Oculus Quest is genuinely impressive, and has the power and features it needs to take VR to the next level. We just hope its Android-based software store can catch up to the PC-based one.

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About the Author

Will Greenwald has been covering consumer technology for a decade, and has served on the editorial staffs of CNET.com, Sound & Vision, and Maximum PC. His work and analysis has been seen in GamePro, Tested.com, Geek.com, and several other publications. He currently covers consumer electronics in the PC Labs as the in-house home entertainment expert... See Full Bio